For a Moment
by one way ticket to hell
Summary: For a moment she can relax and feel the wind against her cheeks. For a moment it seems so familiar, and she wants to look up into his eyes and smile. But then comes the crushing instant when she realizes that the arms holding her are not the same...


**For a Moment**

**Author's Note:** My first Heroes fic! Cheers for me! I've been obsessed with Heroes since it premiered, and the Paire relationship has fascinated me since then. Incest or not, it's absolutely true that both the characters and the actors have intense chemistry with each other. Which is why I instantly hated Caitlin at the beginning, because she was a massive hurdle on the track to Paire-luffliness. And then there was West. Adorable little West. And while I'm still a massive Paire shipper…ClaireWest is one of the most adorable things since Pikachu. So I'll be writing both of those ships. Minus Caitlin. –scribbles on her face-

**Summary:** For a moment she can relax and feel the wind against her cheeks. For a moment it seems so familiar, and she wants to look up into his eyes and smile. But then comes the crushing instant when she realizes that the arms holding her are not the same; that they're gentle but hard, coursing with power.

_For a Moment_

She has never seen so many stars. They litter the sky; glittering pinpoints of light, billions of miles away. Even when she closes her eyes they are burned against her eyelids, and she can still see them, despite the internal struggle not to. Her blue eyes are pinched tight; closed against the glimmering stars and the empty promises they carry. He'd told her once that he'd take her to the stars; and at the time it'd put a smile on her face but now it was a gnawing emptiness in her chest. One that consumes and aches at every turn. She feels so hollow… so drained that she doesn't even hear her rescuer whisper about how she was lucky to be alive, that she shouldn't have done something so stupid. She refuses to listen to his words, turning them into white noise and focusing on nothing else.

For a moment, she can relax and feel the wind against her cheeks. For a moment it seems so familiar, and she wants to look up into his eyes and smile her sad smile. But then comes the crushing instant when she realizes again that the arms holding her are not the same; that they're gentle but hard, firm and protecting, but not with the same exact tenderness. That she can almost feel the power they contain, branding her skin. It burns and throbs, more real than any pain she's ever felt since that time so long ago when she first healed. He won't stop talking to her now, whispering about how he wouldn't know what he'd do without her, about how she shouldn't have risked her life like that; that if he hadn't saved her, they'd all be in for a losing battle against a powerful evil.

"Shut up," she hisses venomously, silencing him immediately. Her eyes are still closed against the world, against him, against everything, and she continues. "You could do anything without me. You had the chance to come back, the chance to find us all again. And you didn't take it. You don't care. Let me down!" she screeches like a banshee, trying to pull herself from his gentle and hard grip, so that she would crush against the ground so far below. She wants to feel the impact, for it to shatter her consciousness, so that she can stop thinking about his prone form, eyes frozen wide in terror and skull opened by the malevolent force that had searched so fervently for her before.

"Stop it, Claire." That's all it takes. In that tone that's not the same; that's different and not her Peter's; not the quiet, emphatic casualness that she had grown accustomed too, that she had dreamed of and remembered even while there was nothing of her in his own mind. In that simple utterance she falls; not out of his arms but out of her shell and it's like a dam bursts and she's sobbing and screaming, and there's nothing he can do to quiet her. She beats against his chest with her fists, not fierce enough or hard enough to cause him any pain, but in a sequence that beats like his own heart, that he can feel the pain within her that's ripping her apart.

She hiccups through her screams, her face pinched in her weeping; red and blotchy. "Why did he have to kill him, Peter? Why West?"

And he has no answers for her, no words that will beat her pain into submission. Because they both know that the teenager has only died to temporarily satisfy a hunger for power that cannot be satiated. He can only remember the way she had kneeled over the already cold body; the defiant look in her eyes as she'd stared back at the monster; blood dripping from a rapidly healing cut on her cheek. He'd pointed his ominous finger at her then; and what had killed Peter, in that moment between witnessing and action, is that Claire had simply closed her eyes and waited. Waited for the telekinesis to drill into her skull; eager for her own demise. And when her uncle had sent the powerful menace dozens of yards away with a commanding burst of electricity, a tear had squeezed out of her blue eyes.

She had wanted to die.

Claire turned to him now, her voice cracking as she pleaded with her uncle. "And why didn't you let him kill me, Peter? Why couldn't you have let me die…?" And with one last sob; she fell asleep, haunted even in her dreams.


End file.
